Lula
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2009
- Messages
- 4,624
ksinger|1351351235|3293509 said:Lula|1351348165|3293489 said:ksinger|1351341901|3293438 said:Lula|1351337108|3293417 said:Dancing Fire|1351314402|3293377 said:because we spent more than we take home.loriken214|1351311031|3293369 said:I want to know why we can't take care of America instead of trying to kiss the rest of the world's butt! Why do we owe China so much money? All of this makes no sense to me and I don't see things changing any time soon.
Lori
Because American consumers have developed an insatiable appetite for cheaply made clothes, furniture, toys, etc., and we buy too much Chinese-made junk at Walmart and allow our companies to send jobs overseas. We import more than we export. But the one thing that we are good at exporting is American treasury bonds. Despite our woes, the U.S. is still seen as a safe place for foreign investment.
Lula, I'm finally digging into your article. It has started a great conversation between my econ-weenie-history-teacher husband and me. I've been bellowing parts of it to him as he shaves. (reading to each other things that we find interesting is something of a morning ritual around here) His comment, "Ah, the classic economic scenario: guns or butter. And off we go...
Back to reading some more. Thanks again for the link!
Yes, it is indeed a tale of guns and butter. Glad you are enjoying it-- although "enjoy" might not be the best choice of words.
Ah. But we'd have so much to discuss. I wasn't an econ aficionado until my husband started schooling me. And then we got a friend who has a masters in econ from the University of Edinburgh. It makes for some very interesting and informative conversations. Depressing ones though, because it shows what a tangled web it all is, which is why like you, I'm not sure there is much to be hoped for other than slowing it down a bit. Basically, we're screwed.
Another fun one to read is "The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street", which details the history of economic thought and how that oh-so wrong idea came to dominate, and how economics came to dominate everything pretty much. Follow that with "What's Not For Sale" a book about how market mentality is taking over traditionally non-market areas of life, and you have another set of the "enjoyable" reads.
Hubs said he's heard of Nixonland, although he hasn't read it. We do however, have pretty much everything Kevin Phillips has written, so the Southern Strategy is well covered in this house. I'm currently reading "The Price of Inequality" by Sitglitz, also a good read that lays it out pretty well.
And yeah, I like paying taxes too. It keeps me from having to step on starving children on my way to and from the car....
ksinger -- we'd have a lot to discuss, and we could share our libraries! I still read many things in hard copy format, though. I'm a dinosaur that way. Thanks for the book suggestions. I actually have a long-standing interest in reading about the foibles of Wall Street that stemmed from the "Greed is Good" era of the go-go 1980s.